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YASTS AND SîRÔZAHS.
riches and welfare, both fatness and locks, both weal and Glory?"
27. 'Ardvi Sûra Anâhita granted him that boon, as he was offering libations, giving gifts, sacrificing, and entreating that she would grant him that boon. For her brightness and glory, I will offer her a sacrifice ....
VIII. 28. Offer up a sacrifice, 0 Spitama Zarathustra! unto this spring of mine, Ardvi Sûra Anâhita ....
29. `To her did Azi Dahâka?, the three-mouthed, offer up a sacrifice in the land of Bawris, with a
1 After his brother Takhma Urupa, who reigned before him, had been killed and devoured by Angra Mainyu (Yt. IV, 11, note).
2 When Yima began to sin and lost the Hvareno (Glory), he was overthrown by Azi Dahâka (Zohâk), who seized the power and reigned in his place for a thousand years (cf. Yt. XIX, 33 seq.).
Azi Dahâka, literally 'the fiendish snake,' was first a mythical personage; he was the snake' of the storm-cloud, and a counterpart of the Vedic Ahi or Vritra. He appears still in that character in Yast XIX seq., where he is described struggling for the Hvareno against Âtar (Fire), in the sea Vourukasha (Vendidâd, Introd. IV, 38; cf. this Yast, § 90). His struggle with Yima Khshaệta bore at first the same mythological character,
the shining Yima' being originally, like the Vedic Yama, a solar hero: when Yima was turned into an earthly king, Azi underwent the same fate. In the Shâh Nâmah he is described as a man with two snakes springing from his shoulders: they grew there through a kiss of Ahriman's. For the myths referring to Asi, see Ormazd et Ahriman, $$ 91-95.
s Babylon (cf. Yt. XV, 19). The usurper Azi, being a non-Aryan, was identified with the hereditary foe, the Chaldæans: the name of Babylon united in it, at the same time, a dim historical record of the old Assyrian oppression, then shaken off and forgotten, and an actual expression of the national antipathy of the Iranians for their Semitic neighbours in Chaldæa. After the conquest of Persia by the Musulmans, Azi was turned at last into an Arab. The original seat of the Azi myths was on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea (Études Iraniennes, II, 210).
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| SR No. | 007677 |
| Book Title | Saddharma Pundarika |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | H Kern |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1884 |
| Total Pages | 2546 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 46 MB |